"Its Beautiful" a Coca Coca Ad
"Its Beautiful" by Coca Cola Introduction "It’s beautiful“ is an American commercial by Coca Cola. Produced by the collaboration of American Wieden + Kennedy advertising agency headquartered in Portland, Skunk production company based in Los Angeles, producer Julia Lafferty and art directors Storm Tharp and John Hillcoat it first aired on February, 2nd for the Super Bowl XVLII final. The 60 seconds commercial uses a modified version of the american patriotic song „America is beautiful“ by Katharine Lee Barthes sung by young women and shows different scenes of life in America starring American people with different cultural backgrounds. The commercial reached out 111.5 million people in the USA and was both appreciated and criticized by the audience. However, despite many critiques on social media, Coca Cola decided to re-air a longer version of the same commercial for the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Olympics and 2016 Summer Olympics as well as this year‘s Super Bowl LI and on National Day. Plot The commercial presents different scenes of people of all ages, genders, religions and ethnicities engaged in different activities in various locations of America, from exploring the country to enjoying the opportunities it offers, all while promoting Coca Cola. Some of these are a typical cowboy riding through the mountains and enjoying the beautiful landscapes, two kids at the cinema sipping coca cola, a big family spending a relaxing moment reunited at a diner, some young people surfing at sunset, a gay couple spending time with the daughter, some youngsters dancing in the street, two young Jewish boys looking outside the window, a group of young muslim girls haning out and many more. Many American faces are easy to spot and clearly framed- young, brown, white, old, gay, each symbolizing the idea of diversity, progression and acceptance. The background song is not the National Anthem but a version of "America the Beautiful" by Katharine Lee Barthes, sung in a succession of single voices and in many different languages inculding English, Spanish, Keres, Tagalog, Hindi, Senegalese-French and Hebrew. The american young women singing the song also appear in some scenes. Moreover, one of the most interesting things is that the logo is not easy to spot at first in some scenes, and is not included in all of them - it appears 9 times in the advertisement and sometimes as a background element. Production The provocative aspect of the commercial is arises from its American nationalist sentiment, which can be drawn both from the song “America the beautiful” as an expression of national pride and from the many emblems of the typical American culture appearing in the commercial, from the cowboy as the typical Western American image, to cities streets and their road scenarios and big families reunion at the diner. Three main players have contributed to the production fo the advertisement, great advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, young, innovative company Skunk and finally art director John Hillcoat renowned for his movies and music videos. All of them have taken part in the production of this surprising unexpected spot which is precise and classic in its construction. The American culture and multiculturalism as the main themes of the advertisement have been interpreted by the artistic director as he explains: … "But also the historical dedication to breaking down boundaries in their advertisement. They were the first company to use an African-American female in their advertisement. And this was in the 60s at the height of the civil-rights movement. There’s also an ad at that time that features a bunch of school kids hanging out on a bench together. Black and white. So we want to push boundaries through the medium.” Reception This commercial yielded a big discussion in the U.S. It was controversial because it was broadcasted during the political debate on Muslim ban. The appearance of the commercial on TV comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 27, which bans immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. Many people tweeted on it. The hashtags #BoycottCoke and #SpeakAmerica were more than 8000 , representing approximately 30% of the total number of tweets, with retweets representing the other 70%. Many people in the U.S. found it somehow divisive. For instance, Glenn Beck, once Fox's foremost firebreather, understood the ad as a provocation. "'Why did you need that to divide us politically?' Because that's all this ad is. It's in your face, and... if you're offended by it, you're a racist. If you do like it... You're for progress." He had a point. Coke's claim to be shocked at the response was disingenuous. The blowback was not only predictable – in marketing terms it was the point. For the ad positioned itself on a crucial fault line in America's culture wars between tradition, myth and modernity.” Positive Reception The enormous amount of anger messages on Twitter resulted in a backlash of its own, as people across the Internet rallied to the commercial’s defense. Thus, a part of the online response was positive with people praising Coca-Cola’s presentation of the ethnic and linguistic diversity in the USA. Negative Reception The enormous amount of anger messages on Twitter resulted in a backlash of its own, as people across the Internet rallied to the commercial’s defense. Thus, a part of the online response was positive with people praising Coca-Cola’s presentation of the ethnic and linguistic diversity in the USA